Things happen when cars are washed

I hate euphemisms. I’ve been hearing them constantly since my husband passed away eleven days ago. That, plus people’s own medical histories. But the saying, “When it rains, it pours” works for me this morning.

This spring, there has been so much rain and hail (with tornado warnings,) that our usual June hot, dry weather is now such that our nine-year drought is officially gone.

We had our corral graded last fall to hold rain runoff in a pond until it evaporated. Usually there is nothing in the depression that our buddy, Bru, created. The new pond has been an ongoing fixture all spring. The horses have to walk around it. The corral is a sloppy mess. I posted earlier about Scooter’s private swimming pool, and how the horses had to be shod at the vet hospital when our farrier was there. Over the last three months, I’ve watched that corral pond evaporate, return, turn bright green, dull green, yellowish, then return again.

Last night we had a storm that made the front page of the paper.

I took visiting cousins upstairs to watch the storm. They are from Arizona, so they don’t know what water looks like. We watched cloud-to-ground lightning, cloud-to-cloud lightning, pouring rain, and flooded streets. We covered our ears for the huge claps of thunder.

This time, I got to the barn in time to close the window so the spare hay on the floor did not get wet. The horses are delightfully soaked again, and I will brush them later before our open house in memory of Earl.

Upon returning from my morning walk, made a little lonelier because the Wonder Husky is in Heaven, I noticed that the corral pond was back, no longer green, and had a mallard duck happily swimming in it.

Euphemisms? Clichés? Murphy’s Law? Yep. I had the cars washed yesterday. It makes me feel better to have clean cars. The daily driver has seen a lot of use with all the company, so it went through the automatic car wash. My beloved classic Mercedes was just released to me after weeks at the shop. It had minor repairs and service, but I didn’t have time to pick it up with all the hospital and arrangements. The car wash does hand washing at a very reasonable rate, and my classic beauty was pristine. I even uncovered Earl’s sports car for the gathering today.

Okay, so things happen when cars are washed. But ducks swimming in the corral is a little much, don’t you think?